4.09.2016

Random Thoughts on Various Subjects 9

I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.

MITCH HEDBERG

1. AMORIS LAETITIA

Pope Francis finally releases his post-synod document, and the apostolic exhortation is exactly what I expected it to be--a turd wrapped in vagueness. I find it utterly despicable. I am not alone in this as other Catholics have issued their opinions on it as well that say virtually the same thing. The only positive thing I can say about it is that modernists and traditionalists both agree that the document gives a green light for priests to allow those Catholics living in adulterous second marriages to receive communion. For those in the middle, there is effort to spin this into orthodoxy. Personally, I don't care to delude myself with such nonsense.

I have not read the document in its entirety but skipped to the relevant bits. The thing is too long to read in one sitting, and it would take less time to read the four gospels. There is a reason for the length. When you want a dog to swallow a bitter pill, you wrap it in something he likes such as a steak. Basically, Francis is pulling some Jesuit trickery where he pays lip service to orthodoxy while undermining it. We see this at every Jesuit college, seminary, parish, and apostolate, so it should not be surprising that a Jesuit pope would follow the same playbook.

The big winners in this thing will be the German bishops and heterodox dioceses here in the USA that think this type of greenlight will bring people flooding back into the Catholic Church. This greenlight will also be used for the sake of homosexuals and cohabiting couples and on and on. How do I know this? Because they already do this. The pontiff has simply given his official wink at these priests. The apostasy continues.

2. BILL CLINTON

Bill Clinton while swinging the campaign bat for Hillary accidentally spoke the truth to some Black Lives Matter protestors. The ensuing aftermath should be a wake up call to progressives and the world that the monster these fools have created will now eat its parents. Bill had to walk back his comments claiming that he is a doddering old man that runs his mouth too much. Amazing.

It is my belief that a liberal becomes conservative the moment they are hit with reality. I suspect that Bill Clinton in his mind became a conservative at that moment with the Black Lives Matter protestors. He has spent a lifetime being a stupid liberal, so he can't publicly change now. But in his heart, he has gone over to the Right. He knows what all conservatives know. Yet, he is trapped in being the husband of Hillary Clinton. Here was his most telling line:

You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns. . .

If a progressive lives long enough, they will wake up to find themselves to be conservatives. It reminds me of Charlie Bronson in Death Wish who begins the movie as a pantywaist liberal and ends the movie as a gun toting conservative. I will now say what Bill Clinton wanted to say but can't.

Black America is a disaster, and we can blame lingering racism, rogue cops, and a disproportionate rate of incarceration. But the biggest problem blacks have today is an inability to take responsibility for their own actions. This comes from that flawed narrative that blames everything on racism. Nevermind that this racist country and all those racist white people managed to elect a black president TWICE. Black people can't go anywhere because of racism. You have to wonder how Obama made it.

If your days are spent smoking dope. shooting rival gangbangers, and impregnating various females with bastard offspring you will have no role in raising, it will not be a service to your community. These things are not caused by racism but a decline in Christian morality. Basically. Bill Clinton is filling the hole vacated by Bill Cosby. Morality matters. Unfortunately, the two champions of this morality in the world of blacks and liberals have turned out to be complete moral degenerates. When you make a mockery of virtue, do not be surprised to find vice in your midst.

3. PANAMA PAPERS

The only surprise in the Panama Papers to me was that they were almost certainly leaked by someone high up in American government. The bombshell is the officials in governments around the world are corrupt using a shell company to hide dirty money from the tax collectors back home. So far, no big name Americans were named in the leak, but this is only because the USA is now so corrupt that the crooks can leave their cash parked here.

I am fond of saying that evil is never satisfied. That statement now comes with a corollary. Evil will eat itself. This realization dawned on me when it was revealed that Deep Throat from Watergate was FBI dirty man Mark Felt. Some fools try to paint this guy as some kind of principled hero who did the right thing, but this is a guy who was indicted and convicted for the same kind of abuse of power that brought down Nixon. Felt's motivation was simple revenge. Likewise, I suspect revenge was the reason behind the Panama Papers leak. This is evil eating itself.

The scandal here is not that these people weren't paying their taxes but how they got the money in the first place. Everyone knows that politicians are bought and sold, and the governments all over the world are virtual open markets in bribery and corruption. Here in the USA, we have a candidate in Donald Trump who admits to making political donations to Democrats in order to buy them off. In the USA, you have to pay to play.

4. ODDS AND ENDS

--It takes a special kind of madness to admit that an unborn baby is a person but doesn't have a constitutional right to live. Hillary condemns herself.

--Jon Stewart was a comedian who gave in to the cynicism of a journalist. He was hit with the realization that the joke of politics never ends. It depressed him, and he got out.

--I used to like Bruce Springsteen. Then, the guy decided to go to the mattresses over restrooms. The world has gone nuts when the common sense that a person with a penis shouldn't be in the ladies' room is now politically incorrect. Is this really something you want to make a sacrifice over? Bruce is an idiot.

--I have grown weary of waiting for the economic apocalypse. Central banking cannot fix the misery, but it can prolong it indefinitely. Lesson learned. You got me, Ms. Yellen.

--Colorado legalizes rain barrels. Now, you can water those pot plants on the cheap.

--40% of borrowers are in default on their student loans. The remaining 60% are in grad school or other tricks of deferment or have rich parents paying their bills.

5. QUOTABLE QUOTES

All liberal priests wanted was some sort of ambiguous text subtly (not openly) allowing them to give Communion to adulterers. They got that.--@RorateCaeli

The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers.... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.--Hilaire Belloc

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.--G.K. Chesterton

I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.--St. Augustine

I've appointed the Devil to tempt and to trouble My creatures in this life [St. Catherine of Siena reports that Our Lord said to her]. I've done this, not so that My creatures will be overcome, but so that they may overcome, proving their virtue and receiving from Me the glory of victory. And no one should fear any battle or temptation of the Devil that may come to him, because I've made My creatures strong, and I've given them strength of will, fortified in the Blood of My Son. Neither the Devil nor any other creature can control this free will, because it's yours, given to you by Me. By your own choice, then, you hold it or let it go if you please. It's a weapon, and if you place it in the hands of the Devil, it right away becomes a knife that he'll use to stab and kill you. On the other hand, if you don't place this knife that is your will into the hands of the Devil—that is, if you don't consent to his temptations and harassments—you will never be injured by the guilt of sin in any temptation. Instead, you'll actually be strengthened by the temptation, as long as you open the eyes of your mind to see My love, and to understand why I allowed you to be tempted: so you could develop virtue by having it proved. My love permits these temptations, for the Devil is weak. He can do nothing by himself unless I allow him. So I let him tempt you because I love you, not because I hate you. I want you to conquer, not to be conquered, and to come to a perfect knowledge of yourself and of Me.--St. Catherine of Siena